Posts Tagged ‘sisters’

One of my earliest memories is bringing my sister home from hospital. A little bundle of screams and joy, all wrapped together and curled up in a huge navy blue carry-cot, positioned neatly in the back of our red estate car between myself and my big brother.
I remember peering in and wondering what this would mean. How this would affect me, how it would affect our family. What this little person would bring to us all; laughter? Fun? Cuddles? Annoyance? I have to say, that unbeknown to me at this tender age of 3, this little person would bring us all of these things, and much much more.

As my sister started to become a real person, by that I mean talking, walking, pulling hair and sticking her tongue out, rather than just laying down, kicking legs and screaming, she was blonde, cute and a pest all at the same time.

She followed me around like a lost little lamb, and I took care of her as much as I could, until I’d had enough and wanted some space and some peace. Well, she talked an awful lot, there’s only so much a big sister can take!

My brother and I used to pick on her a bit, and when we played villages, we chose the important jobs, and gave my sister the rubbish job. She’d end up working as a post lady or a shopkeeper, whilst my brother would be the policeman, and I would be the teacher or the librarian, bossing her about and shutting her into the toy cupboard.

When we lived in Germany, she decided she didn’t like her knickers one day, so she threw them out of the car window on the autobahn. I stifled my giggles as much as I could as my parents told her off, and her face crumbled. From then on, I knew she would be strong. She would be able to stand up for herself, and if she didn’t like something, like her knickers for example, then you would know about it.

We were sent to Boarding School when I was 10 and she was 7, which was for the right reasons, and was really only a 3 year temporary measure. She was the youngest boarder there, and despite everyone looking out for her, and thinking she was adorable, she found it so hard to be torn away from our parents at such a young age. She needed her mummy, and I had to be very grown up and try to give her everything I could in replacement, as we were far away from our mum and dad. I hope that she thinks I did a good job now when she looks back, but it was hard, I was still really a baby myself. She cried and threw tantrums everytime the new term started, and I struggled, but tried so hard to comfort her as much as I could.

On our very first night at boarding school, as we were both in the Juniors, we all shared a dorm. As the lights went out, she asked me to give her a goodnight kiss, in the bed next to mine. I crept out of my bed and slinked over to hers, bending down and plonking a kiss on what I thought was her face. It felt cold! She was giggling away, but it was muffled. She had asked me for a kiss, and whilst I’d made my way to do so, she’d shuffled round and stuck her bottom out of the top of the quilt where her head was supposed to be! The little monkey!

Once we left the boarding school and started at a comprehensive, she faced up to bullies and nastiness daily. She would follow me and my friends around all the time, and I couldn’t shake her off. She hit one of my friends with the hoover pipe when she heard her being mean to me, and I knew then that I didn’t actually want to shake her off. She was my little sis, and I was going to cherish her forever.

She was the first to have a child out of the 3 of us. A little girl, Erin, who is now 6, and a beautiful, loving and bright little girl she’s turned out to be. Despite the fact that her marriage to Erin’s dad broke down, which I think everyone was upset about at the time, she has moved on and found love again, and is expecting her 2nd baby this month.

Today is her birthday. My little Kerry is now 28, and I can’t understand where the time has gone. It seems like yesterday when she would throw tantrums and I would hold her, stroke her hair and tell her that everything would be okay.
It feels like a week ago that I put a bookshelf up in the middle of our shared bedroom as a divider, so that she knew where she wasn’t allowed. It feels like it was just days ago when our father left our mother, and we were thrown together in a strange kind of mourning, and comforting each other, whilst trying to comfort our mum at the same time, as best as we could.

Now we live far apart, I want her to know that I cherish every moment we share together. Whether it be on an email, a phonecall, or when we actually meet up and hug once again.

Reading back through some of my old posts, I realised that I don’t mention my brother an awful lot. Well, don’t get me wrong, he’s had a mention or two, just not as many as he deserves, because, to be quite frank, he deserves lots of mentions because he is awesome, and I do not use that word lightly, because I never ever usually use that word!

The reason he is so awesome is more than just the one actually. There are many.
Here are just a few:

1. When I was younger and things were hard at home, despite him being goodness knows where in the world, he said that no matter what I needed, whenever I needed it, all I had to do was page him (pagers! Remember them?) with the secret code word of “peanuts” and he would ring me as soon as he could. I honestly can’t remember why we chose “peanuts”, but I reckon we’d thought of a few possibly inappropriate words, and settled on something a little quirky, or perhaps we were inspired by the bowls of nuts my mum would adorn the living room with at Christmas time. I really don’t know.

I only had reason to use the secret codeword once, and I can’t even remember what that reason was now. At the time, it was obviously something important enough to warrant the embarrassment of telling the paging operator that the message was “peanuts”, nothing more, nothing less, but it can’t have been that important, or else I would recall it. And yes, he rang me as soon as he could, which was pretty soon after receiving his paged peanuts message.

2. Again when times were hard, and he was away in the army, he set up a standing order into both mine and my sister’s bank accounts. Not a huge amount, but a lifeline each month.

3. He has seen goodness knows what on his ventures with the army, yet he is placid, level-headed and not in the least bit messed up (that I know of!). He deals with anything that is thrown at him in such an admirable way.

4. He and his lovely wife Clare, have desperately been trying to have a baby for god knows how long, having to go through IVF and other treatments. Years. He has seen my sister fall pregnant, not just once, but twice, and myself accidentally falling pregnant with twins, yet he is not bitter. Obviously, both of them must find it very difficult, but he has given us his full support during our pregnancies, despite the pangs he must feel, wishing it was Clare. For that, he gets ultimate respect from me, and no doubt, from my sister too.

5. Whenever I am feeling like crap, whether I talk to him about it over the phone, or after a rant on here (see last post), he has a knack of turning it around. He draws out the positives and inspires me to work on them, instead of dwelling on the negatives. He doesn’t give sympathy, but he does make me do a U-turn, which is exactly what I need.

6. When he was younger, he messed about at school and didn’t really do very well. Now he is absolutely passionate about his work, and has turned it into his life and his career. Last year, he was accepted onto a Masters in his field, without doing any study post GCSE’s before. He’s put everything he has into this, and is excelling, with top marks in all of his assignments. The dedication he has shown is amazing. I am very proud of him.

7. Finally, and this one seems a little strange, but when we lived in Germany when we were younger, we were out taking our dog Amber for a walk one day, through the corn fields (which we would sometimes take a few cobs from). He decided, for some reason, to make me swear. I must have been about 9 years old, and I was frightened. He was older than me, and kind of the kid-boss in our house, so swearing in front of him? That was a scary thought, because I thought it was a trick. I thought if I uttered a swear word after he’s asked me to, that he would turn it all around and tell me off for it. He promised he wouldn’t, so I swore. He didn’t tell me off, so he therefore taught me to trust him, and he taught me that despite the 6 year age gap, he was one of us, and not one of them. To this day, that has always been the case.

Me, Stuart and Kerry share a special bond that only siblings can share. When I see my mother falling out with her siblings, and not talking to each other for weeks on end, I know that if I ever fall out with mine, it will be resolved quickly, especially as my brother is usually a mediator and helps us to sort it all out.

Thanks for everything Stuart, you really are special. Not “special” special, just special. x